In June, 2002, dot-com multimillionaire Elon Musk
established SpaceX Corporation, setting up shop in a warehouse in El Segundo,
California. He staffed the tiny company with space vehicle engineering talent
gleaned from nearby California aerospace companies that were, at the time, rapidly
downsizing. He poured at least $100 million of his own money into the company to
develop not only the Falcon 1 space launch vehicle, but the rocket engines to propel
it.

Musk chose initially to attempt to develop the smallest practical space launcher. At
a time when other dot-com space startups were struggling with plans to develop complex
reusable vehicles, SpaceX planned to build a relatively simple 21.3 meter tall, 1.7 meter
diameter kerosene-fueled two-stage rocket capable of boosting about 0.6 tonnes to low
earth orbit (LEO). The company focused on providing the lowest launch price
possible.

SpaceX developed the 40-tonne-thrust-class Merlin engine to power the Falcon 1 first stage
and the 3.17 tonne thrust Kestrel engine for the second stage. Merlin was a gas
generator cycle engine that used a pintle style injector, an injector design adapted from
the Apollo Lunar Module engine. Some Merlin features were similar to NASA's
mothballed FASTRAC engine, including use of a similar turbopump manufactured by Barber
Nichols. Turbopump exhaust was used to provide roll control. Kestrel, which
also used a pintle injector, was a pressure fed design. Kestrel had a radiatively
cooled Niobium nozzle and an ablatively cooled chamber and throat.

The first stage was a "pressure assisted stabilized" graduated monocoque
aluminum design that used a common bulkhead between its aft kerosene tank and its forward
liquid oxygen tank. The stage was helium pressurized and was designed to
be recovered at sea after floating down beneath a 22.9 meter ringsail
parachute. SpaceX hoped to recover parts of the stage for reuse.

The expendable second stage was fabricated from Aluminum. The company originally
planned to use lighter Aluminum-Lithium, but it was unable to secure a stockpile of the
metal. The stage was helium pressurized. Helium cold gas thrusters were used
to control roll during Kestrel burns and to provide three-axis control of the stage at
other times.

Falcon 1 development began quickly. The first
Merlin test firing took place at the company's McGregor, Texas test lab in March, 2003,
and Kestrel testing began soon after.

Falcon 1 Protovehicle

Fabrication of a "protovehicle" began in early
2003. On December 3, 2003, after a cross-country drive on its custom-built transport
trailer, SpaceX unveiled the protovehicle in Washington D.C., having parked it on the
street in front of the FAA building. During the ceremonies, Elon Musk announced that
SpaceX planned to follow-up Falcon 1 with a more powerful 3.7 meter diameter Falcon 5 that
would be powered by five Merlin engines. Falcon 1 was initially priced at
about $6 million while Falcon 5, designed to haul 4.5 tonnes to LEO, listed at $12
million.

During 2004, SpaceX completed its first Falcon 1 flight vehicle, which it erected at the
company's SLC 3W launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base on October 5, 2004. The
rocket was transported and erected with a trailer-based system. A second trailer
contained a mobile control center. Falcon 1 was equipped with a new carbon fiber
composite interstage, replacing the protovehicle's heavier aluminum interstage.

Meanwhile, the company struggled with Merlin development. Cast aluminum manifolds
cracked during tests, requiring replacement with heavier inconel manifolds. The
engines were not quite as efficient as planned, requiring thrust to be increased to offset
the lower specific impulse. The redesigned Merlin was testing by mid year.

In September 2004, SpaceX won a DARPA contract that included a Falcon 1 space launch from
7-acre Omelek Island in Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The company
gradually built a backlog of missions, including one to launch TacSat-1, a $15 million
U.S. Navy microsatellite, and another to orbit a test payload for Bigelow Aerospace.
The latter launch would use Falcon 5, a design that had been beefed up since its
announcement to haul 6 tonnes to LEO when the original plan to power the Falcon 5 second
stage with two Kestrels had been superceded by a plan to use a single Merlin.

First Fire

Merlin development was finally completed on January 14,
2005, when the first full run qualification test was performed. Falcon 1 development
was completed on March 31, 2005 with a series of structural qualification tests.
Merlin was integrated with the first flight vehicle in April, 2005 and on May 27, 2005,
the first 5-second hot fire test occurred at SLC 3W. Space reporters were
surprised to see how quickly the 15 on-site SpaceX personnel packed up Falcon 1 and its
mobile control center trailer after the hot-fire test. The rocket was back in
its Los Angeles area warehouse within hours of the test.

SpaceX was ready to launch
TacSat-1, but the Air Force did not want the launch to occur until the final Titan 4 flew
from nearby SLC 4E. Repeated delays pushed the Titan launch back until an
exasperated Musk decided to fly the first launch from Kwajalein instead, on the DARPA
mission with an Air Force Academy payload named Falconsat 2 . In June, 2005, SpaceX
packed up the Falcon launch equipment and sent it on a ship to the islands. The
first Falcon 1 vehicle followed a month later.

By late 2005, SpaceX had completed two Falcon 1 launchers and was fabricating a
third.

Inaugural Omelek Campaign

The first Falcon 1 launch attempt at Omelek on November
25, 2005 was scrubbed after a ground-supply LOX vent valve allowed the small LOX supply to
boil off. A second attempt on December 19, 2005 was delayed by high winds.
Then, the first stage fuel tank buckled during fuel draining when the fuel pressurization
system suffered a controller failure. The damaged first stage was shipped back to
Los Angeles for repair. The second flight vehicle's first stage was shipped to
Omelek in its place.

On February 9, 2006, SpaceX completed a hot-fire test at
the Omelek pad with the new first stage, but a second stage propellant leak was discovered
during the testing process, thwarting a February launch attempt. The company shipped
the second stage to Los Angeles, replacing it with the second flight vehicle's second
stage. On March 18 and 23, 2006, the reconfigured vehicle performed hot-fire tests
in preparation for a fourth launch attempt.

SpaceX Falcon 1 Inaugural Liftoff Failure

Elon Musk's
Falcon 1 failed in its March 24, 2006 inaugural launch attempt from Omelek Island in
Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, after a 22:30 GMT liftoff. The two-stage rocket rose
from its pad and ascended for about 25 seconds before a fire in the area just above the
engine cut into the first stage helium pneumatic system, causing an engine shut-down at
T+34 seconds. A downward looking on-board camera view showed a clean, stable ascent
until the shutdown. After the shutdown, the camera showed the vehicle rolling and
falling toward the ocean.

Falcon 1 is equipped with an engine cut-off range safety
system rather than destruct charges. As a result, when the failure occurred, the
rocket fell more or less intact to impact on a reef not far from the launch site.
The Falconsat 2 payload, an experimental microsat built by U.S. Air Force Academy
students, crashed through the roof of a shop building on the island.

According to Elon Musk, the fire, which began just a few
seconds after liftoff, appeared to have been fed by a fuel leak. In a March 31 NPR
interview, company VP Gwynne Shotwell said that the leak had been caused by a
"procedural error" rather than a launch vehicle hardware failure. A fuel
pipe fitting had been opened by a technician the day before the launch to provide access
for other work. The presumption was that the fitting had not been properly restored
after work was complete.

On July 25, 2006, SpaceX reported the
findings of a DARPA Falcon Return to Flight Board. The investigation
discovered that a kerosene fuel leak began 400 seconds before liftoff, when the propellant
pre-valves were opened. The leak occurred on plumbing associated with the turbopump
fuel inlet pressure transducer. When the Merlin main engine started at liftoff, the
leaking fuel ignited. The precise cause of the leak was not determined, although
initial reports that a pad processing error was responsible were ruled out. One
possible cause that could not be ruled out was stress corrosion cracking of an
aluminum B-nut on the transducer plumbing.

Merlin 1C

During 2006, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX had decided
to begin work on a "Merlin 1C" engine with a regeneratively cooled thrust
chamber. In early February 2007, SpaceX updated its web site with revised design
information for both Merlin and Falcon. The data was said to be effective for
vehicles launched in 2009 or later. Merlin 1C was shown to produce 46.259 tonnes of
sea-level thrust - a 32% increase over the thrust produced by Merlin 1A during the initial
Falcon 1 launches.

A revised Payload User's Guide was published in May
2007. It provided details of the new Merlin 1C powered "Falcon 1e" rocket
that would be about 5.53 meters taller and 11.36 tonnes heavier than the original Falcon
rocket. Falcon 1e, expected to enter service after 2009, would be able to haul
25-30% more payload than the original Falcon rocket.

Second Launch

The second Falcon 1 launch,
carrying only a dummy payload for DARPA, was planned to occur during the first quarter of
2007. After being erected at Omelek and after having passed a wet dress rehearsal in
mid-January, 2007, a planned late-January hot fire test had to be postponed when the
vehicle's second stage engine failed a slew test during the countdown. The vehicle
was moved back into its Omelek hanger for work, halting the launch campaign until at least
early March.

SpaceX
performed a brief, successful static test ignition of the Falcon 1 first stage Merlin
engine on March 15. After a scrubbed launch attempt on March 19, 2007, Elon Musk's
SpaceX Falcon 1 failed to reach orbit during its second flight on March 21, 2007.
Flight control was lost about 2 minutes 10 seconds into the vehicle's second stage burn,
about five minutes into the roughly 10 minute planned ascent. It was the second Falcon 1
launch failure in two attempts.

Liftoff from Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands occurred at
01:10 UTC. The flight achieved several milestones before the failure, including passing
through "Max-Q", a complete first stage burn, stage separation, second stage
ignition, and payload fairing jettison.

On board video broadcast by SpaceX showed the second
stage engine bell brushing against the side of the interstage at stage separation.
The video also showed an apparent "coning" motion developing during
the last minute of controlled flight. The magnitude of the oscillating motion
increased during the final seconds of downlink, just before roll control and telemetry was
lost.

On March 27, Elon Musk reported that propellant sloshing
had caused the oscillation. LOX sloshing had been initiated by the contact during
staging, specifically by the subsequent second stage "hard slew" required to
restore its orientation after its Kestrel engine ignited. The LOX slosh frequency
coupled with the thrust vector control system in a way that gradually amplified the
oscillation until flight control was lost. The Kestrel engine continued to fire
until the T+7.5 minute mark when roll rates increased sufficiently to cause propellant
starvation. Mr. Musk also reported that the first stage had not been recovered as
planned.

The "Demo 2" demonstration flight was performed for the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the auspices of the DARPA/USAF Falcon program.
Payloads, totaling about 50 kg, consisted of a small dummy payload that was to have been
deployed and two non-deployable NASA experiments. They included the Autonomous Flight
Safety System (AFSS) and the Low Cost Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS)
Transmitter (LCT2), both developed by NASA. AFSS was to use LCT2 to telemeter data back to
Kwajalein and to Wallops Flight Facility. AFSS and LCT2 were tests of low-cost space-based
range services for communications, tracking, and on-board autonomous flight termination.

The 27.526 tonne, two stage launch vehicle rose on 34.92 tonnes of liftoff thrust from its
Merlin LOX/kerosene first stage engine. First stage burnout occurred 168 seconds after
liftoff at an altitude of 75 km and a velocity of 2,600 meters per second. The second
stage pressure-fed LOX/kerosene 3.l75 tonne thrust Kestrel engine ignited five seconds
after first stage cutoff, beginning a planned burned of about 415 seconds duration
intended to insert the stage into an initial 330 x 685 km x 9 deg initial orbit about 585
seconds after liftoff. As it turned out, the second stage only achieved suborbital
velocity (about 5,100 meters per second), reaching a 289 km apogee before falling
back into the Pacific Ocean east of the Marshalls.

The launch occurred only 1 hour 5 minutes after a dramatic launch abort that stopped the
main engine start sequence. The abort was caused by a slightly low chamber pressure
reading caused by lower than planned kerosene fuel temperatures. SpaceX crews drained and
reloaded some of the first stage fuel before restarting the count.

New
Falcon Details Emerge

In April 2008, SpaceX revealed new details for the
higher-thrust Merlin 1C and for Falcon 1e.

The upgraded Merlin 1C would produce 56.689 tonnes of
sea-level thrust and 63.449 tonnes of thrust in vacuum, 1.5-1.6 times more than the
original Merlin. With more available liftoff thrust,

With the beefed-up Merlin 1C, Falcon 1e grew
substantially heavier and more capable. Falcon 1e LEO payload increased to 1 tonne,
far more than the original Falcon 1, who's LEO payload had fallen to 0.42 tonnes.
An interim Falcon 1, the same size as the original but powered by the initial Merlin 1C
model and able to lift 0.47 tonnes to LEO, would fly before Falcon 1e appeared.

Third
SpaceX Falcon 1 Launch Fails - Cause Announced (Updated 8/6/08)

The third SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket failed shortly after
lifting off from Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll, on August 3, 2008. Liftoff of the
21.3 meter tall, 27.67 tonne, two stage rocket occurred at 03:34 UTC. According to a
message from Elon Musk to NasaSpaceFlight.com, the failure occurred at staging, about 2
minutes 39 seconds after liftoff, following a nominal first stage burn. A video feed
of the launch provided by SpaceX was cut off about 2 minutes 11 seconds after launch,
shortly before second stage pressurization, first stage cutoff, and stage separation would
have occurred.

On August 6, Musk announced that residual thrust
produced by the Merlin 1C first stage engine had caused the stage to recontact the second
stage immediately after stage separation. Separation was timed to take place only
1.5 seconds after Merlin 1C shutdown - a timing that had worked with the original
ablatively cooled Merlin 1 engine. The pressure-fed Kestrel second stage engine had
just started when it and its stage were damaged by the impact.

Lost with the Falcon 1 were the U.S. Air Force Jumpstart
mission's Trailblazer satellite, NASA's Nanosail-D solar sail experiment, and NASA's
PreSat experiment. Total payload mass was 170 kg. The payloads were expected to be
boosted into a 685 x 330 km x 9 deg orbit.

The regeneratively cooled Merlin 1C engine flew for the
first time on the flight, boosting Falcon 1 off its pad and downrange for its 2 minute 38
second burn. The engine had aborted an initial countdown attempt 34 minutes
before the launch, shutting down during its start sequence when one measured parameter was
detected to be out of limit. SpaceX crews recycled the count in 23 minutes.

It was the third Falcon 1 failure in three
attempts. Musk said that the fourth Falcon 1 launch, which could occur within weeks,
will now only carry a dummy payload. Additional time will be added between the
Merlin 1C shutdown and stage separation for the launch.

The third Falcon 1 was shipped to Kwajalein in early
2008. After a delay to allow replacement of a defective Kestrel second stage engine
nozzle, the rocket performed a Merlin 1C static test at Omelek on June 25, 2008.

Falcon 1 Launch Succeeds on Fourth Try (Updated
10-4-08)

The fourth SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket carried a 165 kg
payload mass simulator into space after a September 28 launch from Omelek Island,
Kwajalein Atoll. SpaceX reported that the vehicle's second stage and dummy payload
reached an initial 330 x 650 km x 9 deg orbit about 9.5 minutes after a 23:14 UTC
liftoff. The company also reported that the Kestrel second stage engine subsequently
performed a test of its restart capability in space. The stage was tracked by U.S. Space
Command in a 621 x 643 km x 9.35 deg orbit after the Kestrel restart.

The reported initial orbit was less than the announced
planned 330 x 685 km orbit. Second stage shutdown occurred about 8 seconds earlier
than the time listed in the SpaceX press kit.

The flight took place less than two months after the
third Falcon 1 suffered a staging failure. That failure happened when Merlin 1C
first stage engine residual thrust caused the stage to recontact the second stage
immediately after stage separation. Separation was timed to take place only 1.5
seconds after Merlin 1C shutdown - a timing that had worked with the original ablatively
cooled Merlin 1 engine. For the fourth flight the separation time was extended
to 5 seconds and the staging sequence was successful.

Prior to the launch, on September 20, 2008, SpaceX crews
briefly ignited the Falcon 1 first stage Merlin 1C engine in a static test on the Omelek
pad. After the test, crews decided to replace an unspecified second stage LOX supply
component.

It was the first Falcon 1 success in four
attempts. The regeneratively cooled Merlin 1C engine flew for the second time on the
flight.

Falcon 1 Orbits
RazakSAT for Malaysia

The fifth SpaceX Falcon 1 boosted RazakSAT, a Malaysian
government earth observation imaging satellite, into orbit from Kwajalein Atoll, Republic
of the Marshall Islands, on July 14, 2009. The 180 kg spacecraft was aimed toward a
685 km x 9 deg low earth orbit. Spacecraft separation was planned to occur 50-55
minutes after launch, following a brief restart of the second stage Kestrel engine to
cirularize the orbit.

The 27.67 tonne, two-stage Falcon 1 lifted from Omelek
Island at Kwajalien Atoll at 03:35 UTC on 35.38 tonnes of thrust from the rocket's first
stage Merlin 1C engine. Following a 2 minute 40 second burn, the first stage fell
away and the 3.175 tonne thrust second stage Kestrel engine ignited. Kestrel
completed its first burn about 9 minutes 40 seconds after liftoff, boosting the stage and
payload toward an approximate planned 330 x 685 km parking orbit. The engine
reignited about 38 minutes after its first shutdown as the stack passed within tracking
range of Ascension Island.

RazakSAT was designed and built by ATSB, a Malaysian
satellite builder.

The launch, by the last original-size Falcon 1 on the
SpaceX launch manifest, was the second consecutive Falcon 1 success. It was also the
first successful Falcon 1 launch of a live satellite. Falcon 1 first flew in 2006.
Two "Falcon 1e" launches, by vehicles with stretched tanks and
higher-thrust Merlin 1c engines, were projected to fly in 2010, but the effort was
subsequently shelved.